one step beyond

When we did the bike ride that I described in Appleby Sauce, which included no fewer than seven villages that I’d never visited in my entire life, I was acutely aware that there were several other villages in the triangle formed by the A66 to the south, the A686 to the north and the western flank of the Pennines to the east that also fell into the ‘never visited’ category. This is an account of what we did to rectify this omission.

We started by following the A686 to Langwathby, a choice that was constrained by the limited number of places where it’s possible to cross the River Eden. On the two previous occasions that we’d come this way this summer, we’d crossed via a footbridge, but the main bridge is now open after a temporary closure for resurfacing, so we stayed on the road.

As usual, we took a short break on a convenient bench on the side of the village green, from where I took this photo:

On the two other occasions that we’d passed through Langwathby this summer, we’d continued on the A686 to Melmerby (A Grand Day Out, British Style) and, two days before the ride that I’m describing here, headed for Little Salkeld in order to double back through Hunsonby, which we’d omitted on the ride described in Appleby Sauce. This time, the plan was to follow the B6412 to Culgaith.

Just as we were leaving Langwathby, Paula spotted a mysterious pillar in the grounds of a large house on the right. This is the photo she took (mine didn’t reveal any details):

However, I also took a photo of a terrace of three double-fronted houses with elaborate porches on the other side of the road, which struck me as quite unusual:

At one point on the road to Culgaith, I spotted a hill ahead that was illuminated by the sun reflecting on the road surface, and perhaps I should have stopped to take a photo, but I didn’t. The hill, when we reached it, certainly wasn’t a foretaste of what was to come.

Just before we entered Culgaith, there is a road leading off to the left that would have been an effective short cut, but I wanted to ride through the village, which is almost like a small town, although it has just the one pub. From riding through the village last year, I knew that there is a convenient bench where the ‘short cut’ rejoins our planned route, and that would be our next stop. This is a view of the road ahead, which leads to Skirwith, from this point:

Turning right here would have taken us to Newbiggin, which was not on our itinerary.

We didn’t stop in Skirwith, from where the road to Kirkland, the first village on the day’s route that we’d never visited before, is clearly signposted. I had anticipated that this detour would involve some significant hills, but it didn’t. This is a photo that I took on our way to Kirkland, with the Pennines in the background:

We’d no sooner reached Kirkland than we saw a convenient bench:

The tree is a horse chestnut, which immediately made me wonder whether, in an age of smartphones and social media, children nowadays play ‘conkers’, a game that involved suspending a nut from one of these trees on string and taking turns to see whether you could break your opponent’s conker, let alone other games that I played as a child in the 1950s, like marbles or fivestones.

This is a view of the way we’d just come:

…and this a view from the same point that shows the Lake District fells in the distance:

I was certainly surprised to find a church here:

I took this photo from the stile that you can see in the first photo of Kirkland above. I couldn’t help but wonder why there is a stile here, given that there is also a gate through which worshippers can gain access to the church.

On the way to Blencarn, our next objective, I stopped suddenly because I was surprised to see a lake ahead on the left of the road, which isn’t marked on the map:

We saw large numbers of geese here, which is why I took photos from slightly different angles.

And this is a view looking back along the road we’ve just come:

I was rather dismissive of Blencarn in Appleby Sauce, but approaching the village from a different direction allowed us to see that there is more to see here, although I didn’t stop to take any photos.

Our next stop would be Milburn, which I did write about and include photos in my earlier account. We then continued on the road to Long Marton, although we were looking for a road that turned off to Knock, the next village on our ‘never visited’ list. I was surprised by how wide this road was, and I was also surprised to see a sign that read ‘Not Suitable for Long Vehicles’. Why would a long vehicle want to come this way?

Anyway, we stopped after a short distance along this road to take some photos. This is the view to the left:

…while this is the road ahead:

…and this is a view looking back the way we’ve just come:

We found the answer to the question I posed above when we reached the outskirts of Knock, where I spotted an articulated wagon in a large industrial shed and a caravan park on the opposite side of the road. Presumably, the wagon had reached Knock via the other road that leads to the village.

When we reached the village itself, we found a convenient bench for a short break. This is the road ahead from this point:

…while this is a view looking back from the same position:

Incidentally, ‘Knock’ may seem like an odd name for a village, given its modern meaning as a noun or transitive verb. It derives from the Cumbric word cnuc, meaning ‘hillock’, a possible reference to Knock Pike, which rises behind the village (‘pike’ derives from an Old Norse word meaning ‘peak’).

It began to get a lot more hilly on the road to Dufton, our next objective. The priority road here leads to Long Marton, but I thought that we should turn left, up a short but sharp hill that led to the village green. I was taken aback by the sheer size of Dufton, given what seemed like its relatively remote location, but I was able to find a viable explanation on a sign that you can see in this photo, next to the bench:

I’m not going to list all the information that I learned from the sign, but here are some of the more interesting tidbits. I already knew that the suffix –ton was Anglo-Saxon for ‘farm’, but the full name means ‘farm where doves were kept’ (presumably for food) and was first mentioned in local records in 1176; there were once extensive lead mines on the hillside above the village, now abandoned, which may account for the village’s present size; there are also the remains of a Romano-British settlement on the hillside above the village; and the line of lime trees on the left of the next photo was planted in 1892:

You may just be able to make out the sign of the village pub, the Stag Inn, at the far end of the green.

And this is the road we followed out of the village:

The first part of this road provided the steepest hill on the entire ride, which is what I had expected. In fact, I did ask Paula whether she wanted to miss out the next two villages and head directly to Appleby, even though I knew what her response would be. No! And this hill turned out to be the only occasion on the entire ride where I had to use the small chainwheel. However, the hilliness didn’t relent until we’d almost reached Murton, the next objective on the route I’d planned.

And I did stop briefly to take the next photo, which shows a small cliff just below the skyline and a dry-stone wall in the foreground:

Constructing walls without mortar is widespread throughout northern England, although building such a wall with the material available around here is quite some feat, given the angular, irregular nature of individual blocks. The rock here is Carboniferous limestone, and I did think that there were fossils in a couple of blocks, but the fossils in this type of limestone are usually very obvious, so I was probably mistaken.

We didn’t stop in either Murton or Hilton, although we might have stopped at a bus shelter in Murton if someone hadn’t parked a pick-up truck directly in front of it. I like to have something interesting to look at when taking a break. However, I did take this photo of the road between Hilton and Appleby:

The hazard sign reads ‘Beware Golf Course’!

When we finally reached the outskirts of Appleby, it was impossible to ignore the fact that we were beginning to lose a lot of height, which is always a concern, because you will certainly have to regain it at some point. We did stop for a rest when we reached the centre of Appleby, where I took this photo before continuing:

If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have turned around and taken a photo looking in the opposite direction, which would have shown the brute of a hill that marks the start of the B6260 to Orton.

This road doesn’t get any easier. In fact, shortly after leaving Appleby, I noted a sign that warned drivers of many hidden dips ahead. This meant that although you could hit the bottom of each hill with some momentum, the overall trend of the road is upwards, and after five brutal miles, it was with considerable relief that we reached the turn to Maulds Meaburn.

This is what that road looks like ahead:

…and this the view from the same place to the south:

Some distance further on, I took this photo looking down towards Maulds Meaburn in the valley below:

And so began a long descent into the village and the squandering of all the height gained so painfully on the Orton road. I took the next photo from a convenient bench in the village:

I’d taken the previous photo from somewhere on the skyline in this photo.

Maulds Meaburn is an unusual village. Every road leading into it has a cattle grid across it to prevent livestock from proceeding further, and it turns out that the centre of the village is a huge grassy area that is used to graze sheep, which wander freely around the place or, as in this photo, sleep under one of the trees:

There is also some ancient history associated with this place and a sister village, King’s Meaburn, about four miles to the north. King Henry II (1154–89) granted part of the ‘lands of Meaburn’ to Sir Hugh de Morville and part to his sister, Maud de Vetenpont. Unfortunately, however, Sir Hugh fell out of favour with the king, who reclaimed Sir Hugh’s portion.

There is some linguistic legerdemain going on here. A lot of silent letters appeared in our language during the Middle English period (twelfth–sixteenth centuries), and I think that, like the l in ‘could’ and ‘would’, the l in Maulds should not be pronounced, although I have no idea how locals actually do pronounce the name of their village. Notice too the absence of an apostrophe, something that doesn’t happen with King’s Meaburn but does still happen today with proprietary names like Morrisons, a British supermarket chain.

Last year, I recorded in my log that we’d cycled through Maulds Meaburn on our way from Crosby Ravensworth to King’s Meaburn, but in fact we didn’t see anything east of the River Lyvennet, which is most of the village. This is the bridge over the river that we would have to cross in order to continue:

There appears to be a coat-of-arms set into the parapet of this, the upstream side of the bridge, but it isn’t possible to make out much detail (I didn’t notice it when taking the photo).

Although we couldn’t see it, I guessed that there would be a T-junction on the far side of the bridge, and I was right. It was signposted left to Crosby Ravensworth and right, not to King’s Meaburn but to Morland, which luckily happened to be the next village on our intended route. Before leaving Maulds Meaburn, I took this photo of another bridge over the river:

The road over the bridge is signposted to Appleby, and we crossed it earlier this summer as part of a circuitous route from King’s Meaburn before turning right onto the road we were about to follow.

Shortly after passing the turn-off to King’s Meaburn—you would never guess from the map that the road to Morland is the priority road—we came to a quite impressive avenue of evenly spaced birch trees. This is the start of that avenue:

In fact, I was so impressed that I stopped to take another photo a short distance further on:

I couldn’t help but think that there was some kind of stone archway across the road ahead, but of course that was just an illusion:

We did have trouble finding our way through Morland when we finally reached there, but we did manage eventually by following a road that wasn’t signposted to Cliburn until we came to a road branching off to the right that was signposted. As we left the village, we couldn’t help but notice this bunny rabbit topiary, which appears to have been created in honour of the National Health Service (the blue heart has ‘NHS’ printed across it):

As you may guess from the cross on the right in the photo, this topiary is located in the village churchyard. And this is the church:

I didn’t take any more photos during the remainder of the ride. There was quite a stiff hill on the way to Cliburn, which I hadn’t expected judging from the map, but we finally reached the crossroads at the north end of the village, where we took our final rest. The road from Cliburn into Penrith was familiar territory. It’s relatively straightforward, with only slight undulations, but shortly after crossing the bridge over the River Eamont at Brougham, there is a hill that leads up to the outskirts of town. We come this way whenever we’ve been cycling south of Penrith, and I would normally rate it as ‘trivial’, but on this occasion we found it to be hard work. We also had a few problems coming through town, the result of the sun being very low in the sky, which affected visibility at some key points.

Another tricky problem: our route through town takes us past Penrith station, and on this occasion the queue of cars waiting to get into McDonald’s extended out into the road, but this was an example of where being on bikes becomes an advantage. We simply rode along the middle of the road, past the line of stationary cars, and then we were home. Cold beer(s) never seemed so welcome.

You can follow the details of the route I’ve been describing on this map:

If you’re wondering about the title of this story, it relates to a bike ride we did earlier this month, when we clocked 52 miles. The ride that I’ve described here covered 56 miles, although I have to admit that it was sheer madness. My legs felt like two planks of wood by the time we reached home, and we could manage just a short walk the following day. This ride was also the last of the summer, because we will be heading back to Hong Kong for the winter in two days. Look out for reports on our cycling exploits there, which I’m already looking forward to.

saddle up and go

Although Paula and I agree that the most enjoyable bike ride we’ve done this year was our ride up to Haweswater (Haw! Haw! Haw!), in terms of scenery, a ride that we did last week comes very close, even though we didn’t see any lakes.

We started by heading to Greystoke, a village about five miles west of Penrith. We didn’t follow the B5288, which we consider too dangerous for cyclists because of the speed at which some cars are driven. Instead, we cycled through Newton Reigny and Blencow, which adds a couple of miles to the ride but is far safer. Because we cycle through all three of these villages quite frequently, I didn’t take any photos, but we continued west of Greystoke along the B5288 because it’s preferable to the road that runs parallel to the main road to the north—the problem here is racehorses, which can be both difficult and dangerous to overtake on such a narrow road.

On the way to Motherby, a hamlet about two miles further down the road, I stopped to take this photo:

The significance of this photo may not be obvious, but it was our first sighting of a mountain that dominates the next few miles (see below).

And this is a view looking back down the road, with the Pennines on the distant horizon:

We stopped briefly in Motherby, where I took this photo looking back:

…and this photo showing the road ahead:

Immediately after leaving Motherby, I stopped to take this photo of the mountain:

Relatively few locals have an extensive knowledge of local toponyms, but everyone recognizes this, one of the few mountains in the Lake District with a name of Cumbric origin (Blencathra). Mind you, they are much more likely to refer to it by a name that reflects its distinctive and easily recognizable profile (Saddleback).

My objective was to follow the former main road to Keswick as far as the turn-off to the village of Mungrisdale. It has long since been superseded by the A66, to which it runs parallel, although I didn’t know how much of it still existed (it isn’t marked on my map). This photo of Saddleback was taken shortly after joining the old road:

The next photo shows a pile of logs by the side of the road a short distance ahead:

Shortly after we’d stopped to take some closer photos of the logs, two pick-up trucks pulled up, and when the driver of one got out of his vehicle, I asked him where the logs had come from.

“The wood at the top of the hill [on the right]” he answered.

“Are there any trees left?” I asked.

“Not many!” he replied.

It didn’t occur to me to ask what they would be used for, and I’m no expert on the subject, but there are several commercial plantations in the area, all of conifers. You can make your own guesses as to the ultimate use of the logs. Pine furniture or wood pulp? This photo provides some indication of just how many logs had been piled up here:

I stopped to take the next photo mainly because of the stand of pink flowers on the left. This is rose bay willow herb, which is a glorious and common sight on roadsides because it always grows in large stands like this, although in this case it was late summer, so the display had faded:

This is the final photo that I took of Saddleback:

As I mentioned above, I had no idea how much of the old road still existed, and on two occasions it diverted from its arrow-straight trajectory to join the A66. Fortunately, however, in each case there was a dedicated cycle track running alongside a road that no cyclist in their right mind would want to ride along. The second of these ended at the road to Mungrisdale, and we could get away from the noise of fast-moving traffic for the remainder of the ride.

I didn’t stop to take any photos on our way to Mungrisdale, although there were one or two locations that in retrospect would have been ideal. Instead, I took the next photo as we reached Mungrisdale:

And this is the reason we chose to stop here:

…while this is a view from the bench:

We continued through Mungrisdale, which is a small village, and I stopped to take this photo of the road ahead on the way to Mosedale, which is even smaller:

Notice that the hillside on the left comes right down to the road, although there are no hills on the road itself along this section. I took the next three photos from the same place just outside Mosedale, most of which is located at the start of a dead-end road that leads up this valley, which was carved by the headwaters of the River Caldew:

I have particular memories of this valley. As a student of geology at Manchester University, I chose it as the site for my final-year mapping project in 1966/67. There is an abandoned wolfram (tungsten) mine at the end of the road, the mineral being part of the ‘juices’ from the Skiddaw granite intrusion that underlies the upper reaches of the valley. There were once many lead, zinc and copper mines in these mountains, but all have long since closed.

Continuing the geological theme, this is a view of Carrock Fell, on the north side of the valley (fell derives from the Old Norse word for ‘mountain’ and remains the local word, both in proper names and in the generic term ‘the fells’):

Carrock Fell is unique in England as the only example here of a gabbro intrusion. You’ve probably heard of basalt, which is a common volcanic rock (e.g., the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland); gabbro is chemically identical, but it cools deep underground, so the crystals are much coarser.

This is a stone bridge over the river, which may have carried the original road hereabouts:

I suspect that flooding may once have been quite common here, because the banks have been built up with stonework.

Beyond Mosedale, the road continues over open moorland. This is a view looking back after a short distance the way we’ve just come:

…and this is the road ahead, taken from the same point:

When we cycled this way last year, having reached Mosedale via Hutton Roof, we continued along the road that you see in the previous photo to Millhouse. However, on this occasion I spotted a not very obvious turn to the left, not signposted. I suspected that this road could be a bit hilly, but I asked Paula: shall we? Of course, she said ‘yes’! A short distance further on, this road comes to a ford across a beck (another Old Norse word, meaning ‘stream’) and immediately begins to climb alarmingly. I had absolutely no hesitation: straight down to the small chainwheel. Mercifully, the steep section didn’t last long, although the road did continue to climb. The furthest point on the road in this photo marks the top of the steep section:

I took this photo of the view to the east, with the Pennines in the distance, from the same point:

And this is the road ahead:

Notice the fell ponies under the tree on the right. The road continues through the obvious gap in the trees on the horizon before beginning the long descent into Hesket Newmarket.

We did have one small problem to resolve though when we set off again. One pony had escaped the tumbledown walls of its enclosure and was stood in the middle of the road facing away from us. We wouldn’t be able to get past it in order to continue unless I could, somehow, persuade it to move over.

I don’t remember how exactly I eventually managed to succeed in this endeavour, only that I was careful not to spook the animal in case it kicked out with its hind legs. But we did finally manage to pass it.

And so began the long descent into Hesket Newmarket. We visited this village earlier this summer for the first time as part of a ride that also included Caldbeck, yet another addition to our never previously visited list. This is a view of the centre of the village:

The village pub, the Old Crown, is on the left. And this is the view from the same spot, looking in the opposite direction:

We arrived in the village via the road on the right of the photo, and we would leave via the road on the left. There is a sign here indicating a steep hill (16%), but fortunately it is downhill from here. There is a second sign, partially obscured by foliage, indicating a ‘weak bridge’ ahead.

We stopped to take some photos of the bridge, which crosses the River Caldew:

We didn’t take any more photos during this ride, but I should probably have taken one of the T-junction a short distance beyond the bridge. There was a signpost, or, more accurately, there was a post but no sign. Paula suggested following the priority road, which would have meant turning left, but I thought that continuing straight on would take us in a more favourable direction.

As it turned out, however, following my choice brought us to a series of hills, which grew increasingly taxing, to the point that I had to drop to the small chainwheel. However, we did eventually reach the long, wide and straight section of road that leads to the B5299. In retrospect, we should have turned right at the first opportunity and followed a road that leads to Castle Sowerby church (not on the map) and Lamonby (not on the signpost).

Instead, we continued to the B5299 and followed that for about three miles before turning right for Skelton. Traffic on this road isn’t heavy, but it’s fast-moving, so when we do this ride again next year, as we surely will, we will take the option via Lamonby. The road from there to Skelton is entirely downhill. Having reached Skelton on this occasion, the remaining six miles into Penrith is also easy. Yet another grand day out!

You can follow the route we took on this occasion on this map:

You may notice that the left- and right-hand sides of this map are not precisely aligned. This is because the two halves are on different pages of the Ordnance Survey road atlas that I use to plan our bike rides.